From the very first moment of The Swapper the world captivates, I was thrust into a research centre that has seen better days, without any context. It is this delightful sense of mystery that kept me intrigued throughout the entire adventure. What happened here? What event could have taken place? These questions rippled through my mind, but The Swapper also made me question my own morality. What is considered murder? What is considered right and wrong? What makes The Swapper so strong, is this constant walk within the morally grey confides of the games main mechanic – The Swapper device.

Within the first few minutes we discover The Swapper device, this tool allows us to create multiple copies of ourselves and transfer our conscious mind to these clones. Allowing us to complete the challenging puzzles that lie ahead. Most games give you a few tools throughout your journey, but The Swapper focuses on this one device. What makes this premise so impressive is that they continuously freshen up the puzzle mechanics that work around this device.

Just when you think you have these puzzles figured out, Facepalm Games will introduce coloured areas that restrict our devices abilities. Red areas will allow you to create copies of yourself, but will not allow you to transfer to these clones. Blue areas won’t allow you to create copies within the area, but you may transfer to clones residing inside. Add in anti-gravity areas, gravity inverters that will allow you to walk upside-down, and the colour purple leaving your abilities completely useless.

All these features together create some entertaining puzzles, that will leave you feeling satisfied when you finally out-think their creators. But it is during the games conclusion where these puzzles take an extremely difficult turn, leaving you scratching your head, thinking outside the box and really struggling to defeat these challenging obstacles. It is here The Swapper comes into its element, sitting alongside other mind-bending puzzle titles like the Portal series, or Anti-Chamber. The Swapper wants you to think outside the box and it is content to watch you struggle for hours, trying every solution that comes to mind. This is where The Swapper succeeds.

The Swapper’s visual style is gorgeous. Every piece of art was constructed using clay models and everyday pieces of material, then placed into the world. This unique style is one that will provide some outstanding visual flare, discovering empty rec rooms that remain from the events inside the research centre add more character to the games environment. The Swapper also indulgences the senses with its beautiful, charming soundtrack. These calm sounds complement the games visual style, while emphasising the feeling of being alone inside the games environment.

Why are we alone? This narrative is slowly revealed throughout written logs and strange pieces of texts, building up the mystery surrounding the events of your location. I always found myself wanting to know more, motivated to complete more puzzles and backtrack throughout the games substantial environment to find every clue. The Swapper may be over in 3-4 hours, but this is not including the time spent struggling with some difficult puzzles. This entire journey becomes a delightful addiction, full with brilliant puzzles and an narrative that will captivate until the games conclusion.

The Swapper makes you question your own morality. The very first time you see a clone of yourself fall to an untimely death, hearing their bones crunch as they hit the hard earth, you are left with a feeling of shock. You will swap your conscious mind between these clones countless times throughout the game, even murdering these former versions of yourself just to progress. Your true self at the start of the game was lost hours ago, alongside the hundreds of other versions of yourself along the way. Though your character never speaks, the feeling that you have brutally murdered pieces of yourself throughout the game, is one that will definitely provide a walk down Morality Lane. It’s in this idea of murdering versions of yourself, that makes you wonder what is left of your character when the credits finally roll.

Fans of Super Metroid will be at home, using the games map to discover locations they have previously missed and locate their next point of interest. The Swapper offers an efficient fast travel system that allows vigorous transitions with almost zero load time, this allows you to continue exploring in the blink of an eye never losing your connection inside this world. I would have appreciated an ability to see the entire map with the press of a button, rather than constantly maneuvering around the map to find missed objectives. As I found it took longer than it necessarily needed to be. Though this is a completely minor gripe, that never manages to ruin the experience in a substantial manner.

When I finished The Swapper, I sat there wanting to play more Swapper. Facepalm Games has made a brilliant puzzle game, one that challenges the very best minds, while making your question your own moral quandaries. Even when I found myself completely stuck on the most challenging of puzzles, I continued to think outside the box because I wanted to experience more of The Swapper’s mysterious charm.

The Swapper is a delightful experience, one that constantly reminded me of the intelligent Portal Series, the charm of TheUnfinished Swan, and the atmosphere of Thomas Was Alone. The Swapper has earned its right to stand alongside these exquisite titles, holding its head high.

The Swapper is an experience that should not be missed. This is one of the best independent titles available, and one of the best games 2013 has offered so far.

Anti-Chamber takes reality and spins it on its head. You can never trust what the game is telling you, nor can you trust your usual thinking. Anti-Chamber is a first person puzzle game that tests your ability to think outside the box whilst teasing you with clues in the form of riddles. Created by Alexander Bruce, the game provides a charming experience – if not a challenging one. Its brilliant use of colours and soothing sounds creates an amazing atmosphere, although sometimes the mind bending puzzles can inevitably lead to confusion as to where the next objective is. These instances are when the game loses its ability to provide a fun, unique experience and instead frustration creeps in as you wonder, “What do I do next??”

Within the first 20 minutes Anti-Chamber proves how mistrustful it can be, blatantly lying to you and challenging your creative problem solving skills. These perplexing puzzles continuously find a way to test your adaptability to the ‘Anti-Chamber way’ – similar to the Portal games. It makes you question everything you see; things might change depending on how close you are, staircases may appear out of nowhere and the game may even force you to travel backwards to progress forwards. Anti-Chamber gives players clues in the form of riddles on black paper scattered throughout the world; these riddles are very cryptic and will make your mind do back flips trying to outwit the game. They can also provide a deep life lesson or good advice along the way, which is a nice touch.

When starting Anti-Chamber many will recall The Unfinished Swan, Portal or even Quantum Conundrum. The first person puzzle-adventure genre, with an impetus placed on strong atmospheres, has boomed over the past few years. Anti-Chamber is yet another example. Its use of sound effects and music is top-notch; exploring a level and hearing waves crashing, gulls in the distance and the sound of rain pouring down sets a truly unique scene – one that engrosses the player within the world. I found myself getting lost within its setting. Though there is no story told within the 5-6 hour journey ahead of you, it never takes away from the experience at hand.

The further you explore the world of Anti-Chamber, the more clever level design and terrific use colours will continue to impress. The game also finds ways to extend the intelligent level design, while keeping it fresh, in the form of 4 collectable guns. Each gun you collect adds another ability to the player from moving small blocks from point A to B to controlling their movements as if they were a snake slithering across the ground.

Anti-Chamber is not restricted within the constraints of level by level progression because you are able to revisit previous levels with ease due to the innovative level map. The map and settings menus in the game are all located in-game, via the games main hub. This is an interesting feature and allows easy access to the games many levels and can be brought up with a simple press of the Escape key whenever you choose. Going back to past environments when you acquire new weapons is the best way to discover new areas, progressing your way through the game Metroidvania style.

However, this is also the game’s biggest problem as it never clearly directs the player towards their next objective or level to explore. In this sense you are stuck going from level to level trying to find hidden areas you couldn’t access before – doesn’t sound too bad? Well, every time you switch levels, the previous one resets and you are left repeating the same challenge over and over. This becomes even more frustrating as the levels all intertwine together and you are never given an apparent indication when you have left the area you needed to explore, leaving you scratching your head when you return to the main menu only to find you are far away from your desired locale.

This isn’t helped by the confusing map system that lacks the detailed depth that is desired. The map itself could have been explained better; you won’t know what parts of the map need exploring, where you must go to unlock new guns and overall it lacks a defined path. Looking at your map to see a massive amount of areas open to explore and having no idea where you’re meant to be going is beyond frustrating. This is where the fun ends and the confusion sets in.

Repeating areas is only so much fun when you have no idea what you are doing.

I also had the game randomly shut down on me about 5 times during my playthrough and no definitive reason was given except that the game was ‘Not Responding’. Though this wasn’t a huge issue, it was never enjoyable to see your progress on a certain level reset because of an error. The game does however require minimal loading time – jumping from the in-game hub to any level is done with ease and without much waiting whatsoever.

Anti-Chamber provides a uniquely charming addition to the first- person puzzler, providing an atmospheric experience that is up there with the best titles in the genre in terms of aesthetics. Interesting use of colours will keep you entertained and the mind-bending puzzles will leave you mentality exhausted – in the best way possible. Yet it seems to lack the defining qualities that many games have been able to showcase before it, mainly polish. Though some concepts were really impressive in theory, the execution seems lacking.

Anti-Chamber is a definite purchase for any fan of puzzle experiences, but don’t expect to be blown away in comparison to the best the genre has to offer.

Welcome to another review from myself, I have lately been playing a stack of Vita games and have a few more reviews to post up eventually.

Today however we are talking about Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack.

This is a downloadable Vita game from the same people who made Tales From Space: About a Blob, I however am going in fresh. Never played the PSN game and knew little about this game leading towards its release, hearing so much praise over a game that was only $11* on the Vita store, was a definite buy for me to at least try out. Blobs attack is about a blob from space who was locked in a science lab and experimented on to try and recreate more blobs from its DNA. Start cut scene shows the blob escaping and releasing all of his clones along the way. The cut scenes are few and far apart, only about 6 in total giving you a quick back story as to why you are in the new area you are, they are cartoony and have a pretty cool style to them which I enjoyed. I like the fact they didn't try and overload on story, because frankly that is not why you are here, you are here for game play.

Epic.

There are 24 standard levels throughout the main story, these are 2D side scroller levels with their own little unique twists. Starting out very basic for the first few and gradually giving you more abilities and making the levels more difficult. Honestly I never found the game that much of a had task just playing to finish levels, so if you are trying to breeze through them you will not have trouble. But the reason you want to make sure you explore everything is for the chance of netting a higher score buy collecting all the points bubbles and collecting some of the blobs you released during the intro that are hidden within levels. Now going for these collectibles and your own high score is where Blobs Attack shines. It is very challenging to try and collect them all and rise up the leader boards with your high score (which are uploaded to the online leaderless after each level) this can be a great challenge and push your abilities in many ways.

Apart from the standard levels there are 5 Vita feature levels, basically Little Deviant esque you roll your blob through the screen using the tilt function trying to avoid obstacles and collect more objects to increase the size of your blob in order to proceed. Certain levels are frustrating as the tilt is not 1 to 1, but they will be pretty lenient with checkpoints so you never feel like you will be stuck on the level for a long time, one good run and you can continue through.

$11? Buy it, Play it, Enjoy it.

The main premise during levels is you collect objects by rolling over them of slamming down on them to destroy them, small objects at first and eventually increasing your size to absorb bigger objects and repeat. This is a cool system very Katamari like, but it works well and the absorbing sections of the game are my personal favourite. What is better then absorbing an entire city or an army of tanks? Absorbing planets! These are so fun and really put a smile on myself, one of the key factors actually is the fun factor. Apart from Super Star Dust Delta, this has clearly been the game that I have had most fun with on my Vita, not saying it is the best I have played but fun can go along way when justifying your purchase.

The main game itself can take you up to 3-5 hours depending on skill level, that is a estimation as I played it over the course of a week. You are able to go back and visit any chapter at any point to go for high scores and trophies. The trophies in this game are mostly story based but there are a few wanting you to collect blobs and gold level every mission, they are not entirely out of reach and an easy 100% if you want to continue to have some fun with the game (Which I will definitely be doing).

Aww don't they grow up so fast?

Another great part of the game is the soundtrack, the music during the levels are fun and beaty and really all work together to form the games style. All the songs fit well and you could recognize these a mile away, also when you finish the game stick around for the credits. A musical delight will be on your way in the form of the final credits song, I loved it almost as much as the credits song from Splosion Man, also the company at Drinkbox Studios are giving away a free download of the track list for free. I shall link after my review, I suggest you check it out.

Conclusion

There is no reason not to buy this game, it is one of if not the cheapest games on the Vita network and it is a great play. Fun levels with some cool mechanics and some decent challenge if you seek it out, with a great musical track to go along with it and some very epic moments at the end of the game regarding the events in the story, I could not rec commend this enough. The story if you choose to breeze through is fairly bare bones and will be a pretty short experience, that is one of its downfalls. But if you have as much fun as I did hopefully you will want to explore more like I am. I am hoping for more levels maybe through DLC, but the game as it is now short or not for $11* is a pretty fair price in my opinion.